Is Palm As Dead as Ashok Kumar (Analyst) Says?

Ashok Kumar, an analyst for Collin Stewart thinks that the Palm Pre is Dead on Arrival (DOA). He claims that the recent rumor of supply control are in fact wrong. Palm would be reducing the production because it is still having “multiple software and hardware problems”. As a result, Mr Kumar thinks that Palm will fall short of the 1M unit shipped by year’s end. That’s “highly unrealistic” he says.

That sounds a bit panicky to us. Palm might have problems getting a product out of the door, and for sure, they must be dealing internally with some last minute bug, but that’s just a fact of life in the Tech industry.

From what we’ve seen, it seems unlikely that the Pre suffers any major defects and when we gauge consumer interest, it is fair to say that the Pre will most likely do better than the T-Mobile G1. Now, it’s true, Sprint isn’t the biggest carrier out there, but it has been a solid partner for Palm in the past. Down the road, you will find the Pre in every carrier, just like previous smartphones.

We think that Ashok Kumar’s vision is overly pessimistic. For sure, Palm has an uphill battle, but we’ve seen people more excited about smartphone that had much less potential. Palm is in a better position now that it has been at anytime in the past few years.